When we went in the late 1990s, Nigeria was still in a dictatorship. So we didn't go with a mission. It started really with a sort of blankness and open-endedness.

Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.

The good is not a category that interests me.

Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.

Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city - but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency.

One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.

Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.